How to read a job posting

A job posting looks like a specification. It is closer to a compromise. In most organisations of any size, the text was drafted by a hiring manager describing the person they lost or the person they wish they had, edited by a recruiter who needs it to attract enough applicants to fill a pipeline, and reviewed by someone in HR who needs it to survive a compliance read. Each of those people wants something different from the same paragraph, and the seams between their contributions are visible once you know to look.

Reading a posting well is not about deciding whether you qualify. It is about extracting three things the posting is trying not to say outright: what the job actually involves day to day, why the role is open, and how much room there is to negotiate on the requirements. For remote roles, the full article is a useful reference point for the policies and tools that may shape day-to-day work.

Separate the three voices

The hiring manager writes the responsibilities section. This is the most honest part of the document, because it is the part that describes work they need done and cannot delegate to a recruiter. Read it closely and in order — items near the top are usually the ones that prompted the requisition. the O*NET database is also useful for checking how occupations describe tasks and skills.

The recruiter writes the introduction and the benefits section. This part is marketing, and it tells you about the labour market rather than the job. A long, effusive company introduction usually means the recruiter expects the role to be hard to fill. A two-line introduction and a bare list of duties usually means they expect volume.

HR writes the qualifications list. This section exists partly to give the organisation defensible grounds for rejecting candidates, which is why it is often the least accurate part of the posting. Requirements accrete: each hiring round adds a line and nobody removes one.

Read this way

The responsibilities section describes the job. The qualifications section describes the organisation's caution. When the two conflict, believe the responsibilities.

Find out why the role is open

Every posting is one of a small number of situations, and each calls for a different application.

A backfill. Someone left and the work is piling up. These postings are specific, urgent, and describe a settled set of duties. Speed matters more than polish; the process is usually short.
A growth hire. The team is expanding and the role is new. These postings are vaguer, use more future tense, and often list a wider range of skills than any one person has. There is real room to shape the job in interviews.
A reorganisation. Duties from several roles have been combined. Look for responsibilities that do not naturally belong together — analysis plus vendor management, say, or design plus scheduling. Ask in the interview which of them is actually the priority.
A pipeline posting. The company is collecting applications for roles it may open later, or is required to post externally for a job it intends to fill internally. These read as generic, stay open for months, and rarely move.

The posting rarely states which one it is, but the phrasing gives it away. Words like "replacing", "established", "existing portfolio" point to a backfill. Words like "build", "stand up", "first", "help define" point to growth. A reposted job with an old original date and light edits usually means a failed search — which is good news, because expectations may have softened.

Grade the requirements, do not count them

The advice that you should apply if you meet sixty per cent of the requirements is roughly right but useless in practice, because it treats all requirements as equal. They are not. Sort them into three groups.

Structural requirements

Licences, certifications, clearances, degrees required by regulation, legal right to work, and physical requirements tied to the job. These are not negotiable and no amount of enthusiasm moves them. A commercial driving licence, a nursing registration, or a professional engineering stamp either exists or it does not.

Proxy requirements

Years of experience, specific tool names, industry background, degree subject. These stand in for a capability the employer cannot easily describe. "Five years in the sector" usually means "will not need six months to learn our vocabulary". "Experience with a named system" usually means "can learn our system quickly". You can meet a proxy requirement with a different proof, but you have to supply the proof — the reader will not construct it for you.

Wish requirements

The trailing bullets, often introduced with "bonus" or "nice to have", and frequently a list of everything the last three candidates happened to have. These carry almost no weight, and matching several of them will not compensate for missing a structural one.

Missing one proxy requirement is a conversation. Missing a structural requirement is a rejection nobody has to explain.

Read the compensation line carefully

Where pay ranges are published — increasingly common, and in some jurisdictions required — the range is real but the distribution inside it is not uniform. Most hires land in the lower third. A very wide band, say a spread of forty per cent or more, usually means the posting covers several levels and the title you are offered will be decided after the interviews rather than before.

Where no range is published, the other numbers still tell you something. A posting that specifies a bonus percentage but not a base tends to come from a company with formal compensation bands. A posting that mentions neither, but describes benefits in loving detail, is often signalling that the base is not competitive.

Notice what is missing

Absences are informative. A posting with no reporting line named — no "reports to" and no team described — often means the structure is unsettled. A posting with no mention of the work location or arrangement in a role that obviously requires one means the arrangement is contested internally, and you should ask early rather than late. A posting that describes outcomes but never describes who you would work with can indicate a role that is more isolated than it sounds.

Before you spend an hour on the application

Identify which parts were written by the hiring manager and which by HR.
Decide which situation the role is: backfill, growth, reorganisation, or pipeline.
Sort every requirement into structural, proxy, or wish.
Confirm you meet every structural requirement, without exception.
For each proxy requirement you miss, decide what evidence you will offer instead.
Check the posting date and whether it has been reposted.
Note two things the posting does not say, and plan to ask about them.

When to skip it

Applying is cheap for you and expensive for nobody, which is why volume applying feels rational and mostly is not. The cost is not the application, it is the tailoring you then cannot afford to do for the roles you actually want. Skip a posting when you miss a structural requirement, when it has been open more than three months with no changes, when the responsibilities describe two jobs and the salary describes one, and when the posting is so generic that you cannot tell what you would do on a Tuesday.

Everything else is a candidate for a real application — which is the subject of the next stage.